Fable Heroes is an Xbox Live Arcade detour from Lionhead

The Kinect-enabled Fable: The Journey isn't the only detour on what's ostensibly a windy road headed towards an inevitable Fable 4. Introducing Fable Heroes, a four-player cooperative and competitive hack-and-slash adventure from Lionhead Studios, coming to Xbox Live Arcade. The game tasks you and up to three of your closest friends with defeating "familiar foes and new enemies," according to the Xbox Live Marketplace description.

One of the screenshots in the gallery below woud seem to indicate that Fable Heroes will adopt a board game mechanic to keep our four cartoony heroes moving along, while collecting gold coins which can be used on "upgrades, characters, and items in both this game and Fable: The Journey for Kinect for Xbox 360." There's no word on anticipated release date but, with with Fable: The Journey due this year, we'd expect the Heroes companion – a la Fable 2 Pub Games – to precede it.